James Titcombe, pictured, said he was 'shocked' at how the Nursing and Midwifery Council spent £240,000 redacting its files on him following a Freedom of Information request

A nursing regulator has been revealed to have spent nearly £250,000 on covering up information about a grieving father who lost his nine-day old son to a treatable infection.

James Titcombe asked the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) what details they had about him under a Freedom of Information request and was sent documents that had been heavily redacted.

The NMC had followed Mr Titcombe's efforts to launch an investigation into the death of his son Joshua in 2008 on social media and in his public statements, but gave him reports that 'had all but 10 words removed'.

It came after Mr Titcombe helped shed light on a maternity unit scandal at Furness General Hospital in Cumbria which led to the deaths of 16 babies and three mothers since 2004.

One document he was sent simply said 'flag anything from James Titcombe', with the rest of the text obscured.

Mr Titcombe, who works for a patient safety software firm, revealed the NMC's response to a query about the cost of the work on Twitter.

It said: 'I am sorry you do not feel we have been transparent in the way we handled your data subject access request.

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'As you know we engaged the law firm Fieldfisher LLP to help us deal with your request and the estimated cost of their work is £239,871.85 (including VAT).

'We have the capacity to deal with most information requests internally. Yours was particularly complex'.

After questioning the NMC about the report, he revealed their response which said they engaged an external law firm to help with his 'complex' request

He also revealed one of the documents he was sent was redacted to say just 'flag anything from James Titcombe'

Mr Titcombe added the figure was equivalent to the annual NMC registration fees of 2,000 workers.

Based on the average starting salary of a UK nurse of £21,000, it could also have paid for 10 nurses for a year.

Mr Titcombe told the i the amount of money spent was 'shocking' and that the NMC was 'defending the indefensible'.

He added: 'The NMC has a remit to protect mothers and babies which sadly following my son's death in 2008, they have woefully failed to do.

'However, when it comes to protecting their own reputation, clearly no effort and expense is spared.

'This is a shocking amount of money to spend on hiding information and I can only imagine how staff whose registration fee's have paid for this must feel.'

Mr Titcombe lost son Joshua, pictured, aged just nine days at Furness General Hospital in Cumbria, prompting a long campaign for justice

It is understood the NMC used the external firm because it would be more 'cost effective' and 'transparent'.

As reported by MailOnline last year, an NMC hearing found midwife Holly Parkinson caused nine-day-old Joshua to 'lose a significant chance of survival' when he suffered a lung haemorrhage.

Parkinson and colleague Lindsey Biggs both failed to carry out proper observations and did not 'escalate' the situation when Joshua's temperature plummeted.

The NMC found them both guilty of misconduct at an earlier hearing but concluded that their actions did not directly contribute to Joshua's death.

A subsequent Government report in 2015 found there were 'failures at almost every level' at the hospital and that 'different levels of clinical care' had been expected that could have prevented deaths.

An NMC spokesperson said: 'We receive hundreds of FOI and DPA requests every year with the vast majority of these requests being dealt with in-house by the NMC.

Subsequent inquests and reports found 'failures at almost every level' at the hospital which contributed to the deaths of several babies and at least one mother

'Each request is assessed individually and in this case, due to the size of the request and the very wide range of information being sought, it was decided that it would be more appropriate and cost effective to use an external company.

'We engaged an external company to help ensure that we met our obligations fully in an open and transparent way.

'Handling the request in this way has incurred a significant cost to the NMC, however, we believe that the approach taken was the best way of ensuring a full response.

'Like most organisations in our sector, the NMC has media and parliamentary monitoring services that provide us with a wide variety of information about parliamentary issues and media coverage that are of relevance to our work.

'While we do not have formal media or parliamentary monitoring systems set up in relation to Mr Titcombe, where individuals or organisations are mentioned alongside the NMC, they may feature in some of our alerts.'